The Oh Boy!

So, watching too many commercials from Makers Mark for the Cocktail Party,  I bought some Makers Mark. I tried finding a recipe to use it with.  Ended up riffing on the Old Fashioned.

2 oz Makers Mark bourbon
1/2 oz cointreau
muddled orange slice
2-3 dashes angostura bitters

Shake with ice and a splash bit of cold water. Serve. Yum!

Great with chocolate? Srsly?

So, we drove up to Beltramos today, up in Menlo Park. Found a *LOT* of the obscure ingredients we'll be needing for our cocktail venture. We even found Genever Gin! Woot! So now we got to try the Alamagoozlum for real. I made it with Boomsma Jonge Genever Gin, and Appleton Jamaica Rum. It's really really good. I measured very carefully (pulled out my measuring cups for *real* half to 2 ounce measure) and use Fee Brothers Old Fashioned (Angostura) Bitters instead of the usual angostura.

It's a great drink. I wasn't able to put in a lemon twist, so I used a couple drops of lemon bitters.

The surprise though, was when we were having a chocolate truffle for dessert. I grabbed my water to cleanse my palate afterwards, fully expecting to have a sour, bitter nasty taste in my mouth after the chocolate. The Alamagoozlum goes well with chocolate truffles! Who knew? It smooths it out into this rich, mouth-enveloping velvet flavor. I have *no* idea what is doing that. Alex speculates it's the chartreuse - apparently his grandmother only drank chartreuse after after eating chocolate. So, perhaps it's that.

I encourage you to hunt down the genever gin and the jamaica rum and make a real alamagoozlum. It's worht it.

Because we have chickens...

We have chickens; therefore, we have eggs. We have eggs that I trust. Therefore, we have egg whites for cocktails. Tonight, I used a yolk in a recipe and had leftover egg white. You see where this is going don't you...

So, we tried the Alamagoozlum revisited.

This time:
2 oz gin (Bombay Sapphire - I still don't have genever gin)
1 shot water
1 shot Jamaican rum (Myers)
1 shot Chartreuse
1/2 oz curacao
1/2 oz Angostura bitters
and of course
1/2 egg white (yes, I made two so I could use the whole egg white)

So - this time I used the full amount of chartreuse. And no agave to sweeten it. It turned out great. Intensely flavorful, not sweet (unlike the first iteration). I still want to try sometime with genever gin.

On The Avenue and beyond

The Avenue is another of those cocktails requiring "exotic" ingredients. No, not the "orange flower water", although some folks might have trouble finding that. I refer, instead, to Passion Fruit Juice. (Or nectar. Or Puree. Or... ) I spent an afternoon running around searching for this ingredient. Whole Foods *used* to stock it. Doesn't anymore. Closest I could come was Passion Fruit Orange Juice concentrate in the frozen section of my favorite grocery, Piazzas Fine Foods.

So, I tried it with that.

1 oz bourbon (I used Jim Beam)
1 oz Calvados
1 oz passion fruit juice (I used passionfruit orange juice)
1 dash grenadine (I used Stirrings Real Pomegranate Grenadine)
1 dash orange flower water

The recipe calls for it to be garnished with "a carnation boutonniere". Yeah. How precious. I went wihtout the boutonierre. Eventually, deciding it was too smooth and sweet with no bite, we added a twist of lemon and then a dash of lemon bitters. Too late, I read that if you substitute for the passionfruit juice, that you probably want to skip the grenadine and add a dash of lemon juice instead. I think trying it that way will make it quite refreshing and summery.

We skipped the Aviation - we're both fans and love it. We make it the old way with both Maraschino *and* Creme de Violette. It's one of our favorite "hot-tub" cocktails. Beautifully pale blue, tasty, with enough tantalizing hints of florals and botanicals and enough tartness to not be cloying. It's a simple enough cocktail too -

2 1/2 oz gin
3/4 oz lemon juice (fresh is best of course)
a couple dashes maraschino
a couple dashes violet liqueur (creme de violette)
lemon twist garnish
(I often add a cherry as well.)

 The Barbara West is a cocktail I had high hopes for. Gin, sherry, lemon juice, angostura bitters? What's not to like. Unfortunately, it was too much sherry and also too lemon tart.

2 oz gin
1 oz sherry
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
dash Angostura bitters

 I'll have to try this again with a more forward gin (I used Gordons) and less lemon juice, to see if we can get the balance right. It has potential.

The perfect gentleman

You’re out for the evening. A perfect gentleman, dressed in a rich but not flashy suit, hands you a drink. You sip and it fills your mouth with its rich flavor, warming but not biting, full of character but not excessively complex or challenging. Like relaxing in front of a fireplace on a cold winter’s night, in the comfortable overstuffed chair of an old lodge filled with leather and wool and dark wood beams in the ceiling.

This is the Arnaud’s Special Cocktail.

2 ounces Scotch (I used Clan MacGregor)
1 ounce Dubonnet Rouge
3 dashes orange bitters (I’ve tried both Fee Brothers West Indies Orange Bitters and Stirrings Blood Orange Bitters)
Garnished with an orange twist

The book describes this as a Scotch lovers drink and NOT something that would be enjoyed by non-Scotch lovers. Surprising then, because I loathe scotch and yet I really enjoyed this. Perhaps, with a stronger, more peaty scotch, I might not like it. But given the flavors, I can see where a smokier peatier scotch might actually work for me in this one.

And, yes, DH loved it too. We sipped ours in the hottub, but I am definitely keeping this on the menu for this winter when we use the fireplace.

Riffing on recipes - Amarosa 2.0?

Okay, so Amaro Cora is not made anymore. (The place I tried to order from contacted me to let me know that was a mistake on their website.) I searched and found an Italian website about bitters that explained it’s no longer being made. Darn!

Okay - next best: try riffing on it with amaros I can get. Since we own campari, I tried with that.

First try:

1 shot gin
1 shot campari
1 shot kirschwasser

WAAAAAY too much campari. Totally dominated by the campari flavor. Never mind. Not doing that again!

Next try:

1 shot gin
½ shot campari
1 shot kirschwasser

Much better! Balanced, bitter but not overly so. All the ingredients obviously play their part here, including the twist of lemon. I do want to try with Aperol some time, as I suspect it’ll be a bit closer to the “real” cora flavor.

And off onto a tangent:
Lillet Amarosa:

2 shots Lillet Rose’
½ shot kirschwasser
½ shot gin → brought up after tasting to 1 shot gin

Almost. Adding the extra half shot of gin brought it to a decent flavor balance.

DH’s comments were -- the Lillet Rose' version is like dating a girl who wears long socks and has her hair made up in tresses -- and can’t go out with you on Sunday morning ‘cuz she goes to Church then of course.  Can be wonderful and sweet, if you can stay awake...

The Campari version is like dating a girl who wears torn fishnet stockings, has plenty of tattoos, and has her hair in a Mohawk.  You may or may not be able to build on this but one thing is sure -- you won’t be bored!-)

Update: I ended up only drinking about half mine. The gin was definitely affecting me pretty strongly by the time I had tasted the versions. So, I gave the rest of mine to DH and switched back to water. (See - this is why I do fancy cocktails - I'm such a lightweight I can only handle one, so I might as well make that one worthwhile. )

No esoterica, just perfect balance

The Algonquin

This is a keeper. No esoteric ingredients. Everything easily accessible. We didn't need to make any substitutions. Just a perfect balance of flavor and fragrance.

The rye provides a nice background spiciness. The vermouth is fragrant but dry, and the pineapple smooths it out without making it cloyingly sweet.

The recipe:
1 jigger rye (I used Redemption Rye)
1/2 jigger dry vermouth (I used Noilly Pratt)
1/2 jigger pineapple juice

There is a variation which adds a dash of peach bitters and then it's called a Queen Anne. Now, I don't have official "peach bitters" but I canned peaches last year and put the peach pits, skins and clinging peach bits in vodka for a couple months. So I put in a dash of that. DH didn't like it that way - he didn't like the peach "aftertaste". I liked it though.

I also made a second cocktail with Old Overholt Rye. It wasn't as good. I was surprised at the difference it made. The pineapple was more pronounced, the vermouth less, and there was less spiciness.

Amaro Cora

I suspect we'll have to skip a couple here and there due to availability of ingredients. Bitters is one of the common culprits - especially the more esoteric ones. Happily, many of them are being revived due to the popularity of mixology.

I did manage, after much searching, to find a source that claims to let me order Amaro Cora, the heart of the next but one cocktail, the Amarosa. (Two of the sources referenced in the book didn't work: one is out of business, and the other is out of stock.) An Italian site I read claimed it was no longer being made. Crossing my fingers that the place I ordered, raederswine.com isn't just teasing about the availability.

Of course, the vendor had a $75 minimum order, so I took the opportunity to pick up the some other ingredients that I'll be needing for the future, including Cherry Heering, Applejack, and Plymouth Gin. I did tell them to contact me if they aren't able to fill the order for the Amaro Cora, since that's the point of ordering from them.

We'll see how long it takes to arrive. In the meantime, we'll just put a sticky note there and return to it when the ingredients arrive.

Alphabetically, dammit!

DH and I have decided to work our way through Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh (aka Dr. Cocktail) alphabetically! (DH keeps saying we don't have to go alphabetically but I insist that we do!)

We are not purists - we may (probably will) make other substitutions along the way. We have some constraints - no sugar syrup (we use agave instead). As I go, I'll post what substitutions we're making and notes about how we liked the drink (or not).

We started tonight with the Alamagoozlum Cocktail.

I was nervous about this one - I typically HATE chartreuse. OTOH - raw eggwhite is fine with us - we have backyard chickens so I *know* my eggwhites are fine in drinks.

The list of ingredients:
1/2 egg white (I used a whole, small eggwhite)
2 oz genever gin (I used Tanqueray)
2 oz water (cold filtered water)
1-1/2 oz Jamaican rum (I used Myers Dark rum - it's Jamaican!)
1-1/2 oz yellow or green Chartreuse (I used 1/2 oz green Chartreuse)
1-1/2 oz gomme syrup or sugar syrup (I used 1/2 oz agave syrup)
1/2 oz orange curacao (I used 1 oz blue curacao)
1/2 oz angostura bitters (! I did it but wow. Never saw that much bitters in any drink before!)

So, the verdict?
I liked it pretty much as is. DH didn't like it - too sweet for him. I enjoyed it - although it was pretty sweet. We both liked the complexity. I was surprised to enjoy it in spite of the chartreuse!

In the future, if we make this again, I'm going to try a different rum (Myers can be pretty sweet), a different gin (I want to try genever gin), more chartreuse, less curacao, and experiment with other bitters.

DH here: the overwhelming sweetness was quite reasonably defeated once DW took half my drink and topped it up with more gin, chartreuse, dash of lemon bitters, two dashes of lemon juice on my request. Guess this makes it a totally different drink (we'll need to name it!-) but I taste the original complex taste essentially unaltered, just relieved from the oppression of the excessive sweetness.

Next up: the Algonquin! I'm looking forward to it...